3-167 - Learning what from whom: Early selective trust and the implications for cultural transmission

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

The recent explosion of research on selective learning raises questions about the psychological mechanisms underlying such learning and its adaptive function (e.g., Gelman, 2009; Harris, 2012; Mills, 2013). To date, little research has explored how theoretical perspectives on cultural transmission might explicate children’s selective learning (e.g., Chudek & Henrich, 2011). Cultural transmission would be optimized if children prefer to learn certain kinds of information from certain informants. In this symposium, we examine such preferences among 3- and 4-year-olds. Paper 1 examines how children determine an object’s function. Four-year-olds prefer to learn such normative functional information from an adult displaying conventional knowledge over an adult who uses objects unconventionally. Paper 2 examines children’s sensitivity to informant age (adult or child) when learning content more relevant to children (a children’s TV show). Children placed more trust in child informants and extended that trust to other domains of knowledge. Paper 3 examines children’s learning from either an unfamiliar adult or from their mother in a categorization task and an altruistic giving task. Children learned from either model in the categorization task; by contrast, children privileged their mother’s information for norms of giving. Together these papers demonstrate that children select different informants based on the content they are learning, thus revealing a more complex picture of cultural transmission than emphasized in current theories. The broader implications of these findings will be discussed by a pioneer in the study of children’s selective learning.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Kathleen H Corriveau, Boston University

Discussant

• Paul Harris, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Selective Trust in the Domain of Practical Knowledge: Three- and Four-Year-Olds’ Sensitivity to Convention and Confidence - Presenting Author: Betty Luu, University of Sydney; Elizabeth Whittaker, University of New South Wales; Marc de Rosnay, University of Sydney

• Domain sensitivity in preschoolers’ selective trust: Extension of (mis)trust? - Presenting Author: Amanda Jayne Lucas, University of St. Andrews; Charlie Lewis, Lancaster University

• Children prefer parents over unfamiliar adults for models of altruism but not for a categorization task - Presenting Author: Peter R Blake, Boston University; Kathleen H Corriveau, Boston University; Laura J Nelson, Boston Univ